Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) relies on business intelligence tools to cut the business impact of returned, unsold magazines.

Before the year 2000 the return level was at 33 percent - a figure described by CEO John Alexander as costing the company at a rate of A$1 million (US$736,280) for every percent, but the main problem was that it took up to three months for the company to actually find out how many magazines had been returned.

BI manager Sam Mallett said the company has improved final sales return figures from three months to two days.

He said data from almost all business units (except the advertising department) now go straight into a BI data warehouse.